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Interesting ASR review of small GR Research speaker kit

I bounce between various kinds of analysis — more subjective listening reports, more quantitative measurement analyses and, my favorite, those that combine both strategies to tell a useful story about audio products.

Amir of ASR has just done a very powerful takedown of a fairly inexpensive kit being sold by Danny at GR Research. Not only does he prove his point about the speakers, he also makes (to my mind) a very convincing case that Danny put his finger on the scale in how he reported his own measurements. 

I'm not in any camp — Danny's or Amir's or anyone else's. What I appreciate is thoroughness and meticulousness in exposition. Danny does that in his own videos. (Again -- to me. I'm really still learning and cannot easily spot gaps in argument in this subject matter.)

I know people with some of GR's best kits — and I've heard one of them. They sounded incredible. I've watched a bunch of Danny's videos where he criticizes other companies; I've come away thinking, "Wow, he really revealed some of the grift embedded in that product." 

But here, the tables are turned, it seems, on Danny. I hope he responds, both to defend his reputation and methods, but also because it will set in relief where some of the distance may be between these two dominant online figures' methods in assessing what makes for a good speaker.

https://youtu.be/IikqAg38FPs

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Showing 2 responses by decooney

decooney
1,906 posts
 

@boxer12 GR Research is a respected audiophile speaker manufacturer. They are devoted to the advancement of high end audio. Amir is not.

 

Yep. It’s easy nitpicking for naysayers who don’t design and build successful sounding speakers that actually sell. What does not measure the best but sounds good to one person might not sound good to the next person staring at meters first.

One of the best kit speakers I did in collaboration with a lead engineer at Madisound, they recommended drivers that did not measure the best, not flat, lively, some distortion, and yet they sounded amazing. The person who bought the speakers loved them. He told me he could not believe how good they sounded. :) 

 

 

decooney
1,906 posts
 

Before his passing, Mark Markel of Analysis Plus posted this on his site.They make products for the aerospace and medical industry with precise measurements.  

 https://homeaudio.analysis.plus/knowledge-base/#collapse-1-112 

quote: 

"The faintest sound wave a normal human ear can hear is 10(-12) Wm(-2). At the other extreme of the spectrum, the threshold of pain is 1 Wm(-2). This is a very impressive auditory range."

"The ear, together with the brain, constantly performs amazing feats of sound processing that our fastest and most powerful computers cannot even approach."

 

 

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